I. A concise History of Opinions concerning Jesus

Christ.
You will say, If Christ be not really God, but merely a man, though inspired and Assisted by God, how came the Christian world to fall into so great an error ? In return, I might ask, how, if
Christ
40 A concise History of Opinions
Christ be truly God, equal to the Father,. so many Christians, and especially the Jewish Christians,- and many others- in the vpry early ages of the Christian church, came to think him to be merely a man, when it may be easily conceived that, oiv many accounts, Christians, who were continually reproached with the meanness. of their master, would be disposed to add to rather than take from* his dignity ? But it is not difficult to show by what means, and by what steps, Christians came to* think as the generality of them now do.
It was the universal opinion of philosophers, at* the time of the promulgation of Christianity* that: the souls of all men had existed before they were sent to animate the bodies that were provided for them here, and also that all souls were emanations or parte* detached from the- Deity. Format that time* there was no idea of any substance being properly- immaterial and indivisible. When these philoso- phers became Christians, and yet were ashamed of being tlte disciples of a man who had been crucified,* they naturally gave a distinguished rank to the soul of Christ before he came into the-, world. They- even went one step fimhef, and maintained that Christ had a body in appearance only, and not in reality, and therefore that he suffered nothing at r ali when he was scourged and crucified.
This opinion the apostle John reprobates with 1 great severity, and even call:* it ^Antichristiaiif
1 Joha
concerning Jesus Christ. 4»l
I John iv. 3. whereas, though it is acknowledged that the other opinion, v\z. that of Christ being merely a man, existed in the times of the apostles, it is remarkable that this apostle takes no notice of it. It was plainly the doctrine of those only who- maintained that Christ was not truly a man that gave this apostle any disturbance, or he could n*ever have said as he does, 1 John iv. 2. "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (that is, was truly a man) is of God."
After this, philosophizing Christians began to add to the pre-existent dignity of Christ in another way, and at length carried it much higher than those upon whom this apostle animadverted with so much severity. They said that Christ was ori- ginally in God, being his reason, or logos, which* came out of him, and was personified before the creation of the world, in which he was the imme- diate agent; and that this new personage was henceforth the medium of all the divine communi- cations to mankind, having been the person who spake to Adam in paradise, to Noah, to Abraham> -and all the Patriarchs, who delivered the law from mount Sinai, and, lastly, inhabited the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
On this principle they explained many passages in the Old Testament, in which the word of God is spoken of, as that of the psalmist, t€ By the word' of the Lord were the heavens made,** &c. making*
this
43 A concise History of Opinions
this word to be a person distinct from God, whose m word it was ; whereas nothing can be more plain, ■ than that by the word of God in this place, i,s meant the power of God, exerted with as much ease as men utter words.
These philosophizing Christians took great pains to explain how the reason or wisdom of God could- thus become a person distinct from God, and yet , God continue a reasonable being ; but their account* of it is too trifling to be recited in this place. However, it was far from being pretended, in general, that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. was such a mystery as could not be explained. For by mystery they only meant something of a solemn nature, which was unknown till it was- revealed or explained. And indeed this is plainly the use of the word mystery, in the New Testament ; and it was also the usual meaning of the word when the present translation of the Bible was made ; the mysteries of any particular frade being the secrets of that trade, which yet every master taught his apprentices.
In this state the doetrine continued till after the council of Nice, in the year of our Lord 325 ; but in all this time a real superiority was always acknowledged in the Father, as the only source of divinity : and it was even explicitly acknowledged that there was a time when the Son of God had no separate existence, being only the reason of God^
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concerning Jesus Christ. 43
just as 'the reason of man is apart, or a property, of man. One o£ the most eminent of the Christian Fathers says, " There was a time when God was neither a Father nor a judge; for he could not be a Father before he had a son, nor a judge before there was sin/'
So far were they from supposing ihe Son of God to be equal to the Father, that when they were charged, as they frequently were, with making two Gods, they generally replied, that the Son was only God of God, as having proceeded from a su>» perior God, which is the language of the Nicene Creed ; whereas the Father was God of himself {avroiso$) f by which they meant under tved, which they held to be the prerogative of the Father only*.
In all this time the Jewish Christians, who were not tainted with the heathen philosophy, main- tained the doctrine of the proper and simple hu» inanity of Christ. Athanasius himself was so far from being able to deny this, that he says all the Jews were so fully persuadec) that their Messiah was to be a man like themselves, that the apostles- were obliged to use great caution in divulging the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. He says that the reason why Peter, Acts ii. 22. only calls him a man approved of God, and why, on other occasions, in the course of that book, and other parts of the New Testament, he is simply called a man, was, that at first the apostles did not think proper to do more than prove that Jesus was the Christ, or Messiah,
and
44 A concise History of the Doctrines
and that they thought it prudent to divulge the doctrine of the divinity of Christ by degrees. He likewise says, that the Jews of those times, mean- ing the Jewish Christians, being in this error thems selves, drew the Gentiles into-it.. Athanasius greatly commends the apostles for this address in their circumstances. But what the apostles scrupled to teach, we should be scrupulous in believing.
It also clearly appears from ecclesiastical history, that the unlearned among the Christians were ex- ceedingly averse to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, even in the qualified sense above mentioned', opposing what they called the supreme monarchy of the Father to the novel doctrine of the divinity of the Son ; and the philosophizing Christians wewe obliged to make laboured apologies to these early Unitarians, acknowledging the perfect in*- feriority of the Son to the Father. But at length these Unitarians were overborne by the superior influence and popularity of their adversaries, who, from believing Christ to be God in an inferior and- qualified sense of the word,, catne, in the natural' eourse of things, to believe" him to be God equal to the Father himself, and to have existed from all eternity independently of him. But it was several centuries before this doctrine was fully established. And the Holy Spirit was generally considered either as the same thing with the povjer of God, that i* God himself, (just as the spirit of a man is a man,) or. eke a superangelic being, inferior both to
the.
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the Father and the Son, till after the council of Nice.
In the mean time, Arius and his followers, shocked at the doctrine of Christ being of the same substance with the Father, maintained that, though he had pre-existed, and had been the me- dium of all the dispensations of God to mankind, he was, like all other derived beings, created out of nothing ; the opinion of all souls having been emanations from the supreme mind being then generally denied by Christians.
Thus did it please God, for reasons unknown Trinitarian and Arian opinions, as he permitted the rise and amazing power of the man of sin, and many corruptions and abuses of Christianity, ut- terly subversive of the genuine purity of the Gospel, till the full time for the reformation of this and other gross corruptions of Christianity was come.
I L A concise History of the Doctrines of Grace, Original Sin, and Predestination.
It was a controversy about the nature and use of baptism that occasioned the starting of the doctrine of the natural impotence of man to do what God requires of him, of the imputation of the sin of Adam to all his posterity, and of the arbitrary predestination of certain individuals of the human race to everlastmg life, while the rest of mankind were left in a state of reprobation ; and this was so
late
46 A concise History of
late as four hundred years after Christ. Before^ that time it had been the universal opinion of Chris- tians, and of Austin Himself, who first advanced the doctrines above mentioned, that every man has the power of obeying or disobeying the laws of God, that all men may be saved if they will, and that no decrees of God will be the least obstruction in the way of any man's salvation.
But Pelagius, a man of good understanding and exemplary morals, in his declamations against some abuses of baptism, asserting that baptism itself does not wash away sin, as was then gene- . rally supposed, (on which account it was the Custom with many to defer it till near death,) nor could have been appointed for that purpose, because in- fants, which have no sin, are baptized ; Austin in opposition to him maintained that, though infants have no actual sin of their own, they have the stain of original sin in which they were born ; though he was far from asserting that Adam was the federal head of all his posterity, and that his sin was properly imputed to them. This was an ' improvement upon the doctrine in afterages. What Austin maintained was, that men derive a corrupt nature, or a proneness to sin> from Adam.
Also, having been led, in the course of this controversy, to assert that by means of original sin no man had it in his power to attain to salvation, he was obliged to maintain that it depended upon the will of God only who should be finally saved,
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the Doctrine of Atonement. 47
£,and that he predestinated whom he thought proper for that purpose, independent of any foresight of their good works, which it was hot in their power to perform without his immediate assistance, and iu which he must be the first mover. » But notwithstanding this doctrine of the cor- ruption of human nature, of the necessity of di- vine grace for lhe production of every good thought or action, and of predestination to eternal life 'without regard to good works, advanced by Austin, prevailed in the West, chiefly through the authority of his name, it was never received in the Eastern church, and was much controverted, and held with various modifications, in the Western. Also, to- gether with this doctrine of grace, the divines of the Roman Catholic church held the doctrine of human merit, founded en the right use of the grace of God to man. And the present doctrines of grace, original sin, and predestination, were never maintained in their full extent till after the reformation by Luther, who was a friar of the order of Austin, had been much attached to his doctrines, and made great use of them in opposing the popish doctrines of indulgence, founded on that of merit,